Though not quite as 'infinitely' happy as Rosamund Pike, I am quite content to
be an unmarried soon-to-be mother

Like a modern-day Whore of Babylon, I have a child in my belly but no ring on my finger. Though the latest census has shown that those of us who are unmarried are now in the majority, I cannot honestly say that I feel entirely comfortable with it, that I am able to celebrate my status in quite the same way as Rosamund Pike, the 33-year-old former Bond girl who told Vogue that: “I’m not married, I have a baby, and it feels infinitely more right.”

I get a bit narky when the builder calls to tell me he has left the keys with my husband – that’s funny, I say, because I don’t have a husband – and when the woman in the John Lewis nursery department asks for our surname. The letters from well-meaning elderly relatives – “We are delighted to hear your news, and will be even more delighted to attend your wedding, which will of course happen before the birth of your child” – annoy me almost as much, though I can let them go due to the fact they are of another generation, one where you got married hastily before being sent off to an uncertain future that involved murderous Nazis.

But what I cannot stand is the hectoring from Iain Duncan Smith and his think tank about the moral pandemonium caused by unmarried couples. Dr Samantha Callan of the Centre for Social Justice was quick to explain what the future has in store for my unborn child, and the children of the rest of the 11.9 per cent of the country who happen to be cohabiting couples: their parents will probably break up, thus leading to a life of destitution. “Family breakdown is more likely if parents aren’t married,” explained Dr Callan. “Children tend to fare worse if they do not grow up with both their parents – they are more likely to fail at school and develop drug and alcohol problems.” Joy!

Meanwhile, Sir Paul Coleridge of the Marriage Foundation (he believes that people now “recycle” partners, as if they were empty wine bottles), said that the 2011 census statistics – which show that fewer than half of people over 16 in England and Wales are now married – “must be regarded as a worrying development”.

I’m not sure it’s helpful to be so puritanical about the unmarried, as if all of us are gin-soaked delinquents looking over our partner’s shoulder for a better offer. There is a reason I am not married and, unusually, it’s not that I haven’t been asked, or because I don’t believe in it. I would like to get married to my other half very much, just as I know he would like very much to get married to me. It’s just that we have more important things to do than blow our savings on a glorified booze-up for 150 of our closest friends.

It amuses me when critics of gay marriage bang on about it undermining a sacred institution, as if the sanctity of marriage hadn’t already been undermined by heterosexuals. It will be interesting to see how many gay couples actually bother to go through with this rigmarole of tying the knot once it becomes legal, and how many opt instead to return to the cosy domestic bliss of cohabitation. Because if we were truly cynical and did a cost/benefit analysis of marriage – almost £20,000 for something that has a one in three chance of failing – we might be surprised that so many people walk up the aisle in the first place.

The sad truth is that for numerous people of my generation, marriage has become as bloated and grotesque as a great uncle who has feasted on all the wedding cake (six times more expensive than a bog-standard, tiered cake), a horrible exercise in commercialisation in which brides and grooms-to-be are forced to spend more time thinking about seating plans and bridesmaids’ dresses than they are about what it might mean to spend the rest of their lives with one person.

Marriage has gone from a celebration, to an industry, a Clinton Cards experience that I have no desire to put either myself or my nearest and dearest through. (My sister recently declined to attend the hen do of one of her oldest friends because she couldn’t afford the £500 price tag.)

It can’t help that most people in their twenties and thirties spent their formative years living through the divorce boom of the Nineties. We do not want to repeat the mistakes of our parents, thank you very much.

So you can look at the census figures and worry that this is the end of days. Or you can see it as something more interesting than that: a generation of people treading carefully, putting down solid foundations before they get carried away with a big fat wedding. A generation of people avoiding marriage not because they are thoughtless and godless and selfish, but because they happen to think that as it stands, the institution simply isn’t sacred enough.

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Why I wish I was still part of Generation Rent

Pity the poor renter of flats and houses. First they are treated like second-class citizens for not having their Nike-clad feet on the property ladder. Now they are being blamed for damaging community feeling.

As the number of people renting homes was revealed to have almost doubled in a decade, a new report by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) suggested this prevents families from putting down roots and is bad for society. “Our analysis finds that home ownership has a big effect on people’s sense of belonging to their neighbourhood,” said Dalia Ben-Galim of the IPPR.

I became a home-owner about a month ago. Currently, I can’t see what all the fuss is about. I might even go so far as to say that my view from the property ladder – which everyone bangs on and on about – isn’t so great after all. We’ve had to spend a small fortune on damp-proofing. Then there was the washing machine that the delivery man decided he couldn’t fit because of “health and safety” issues. The plumber we called out managed to break the boiler (“Sorry,” he said, “but you’ll need to call out a qualified heating engineer to fix that”), and we have spent the last three nights taking succour from a small electric heater in our bedroom – an improvement, actually, from the two weeks spent camping in the living room.

When someone told me that, after becoming a first‑time buyer, I would soon hear the pitter-patter of feet, I didn’t realise they would belong to an army of Polish builders who turn up at the crack of dawn and start drilling next to my head.

I keep saying that if we were renting in these conditions, we’d be able to sue the landlord, to which my boyfriend theatrically throws his arms out – as if opening a very large book – and says: “But it’s ours!” Even this is a lie. It isn’t ours. It mostly belongs to the bank.

Everyone rents on the continent, don’t they? I think I can see why. Still, perhaps it’s simply a case of the grass being greener on the other side – where, as renters, they can afford a bigger garden.

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Service with a smile is bad for Britain

Three cheers to staff at Cathay Pacific, who are threatening to strike over pay in the most innovative of ways. Airline attendants insist that they will turn up for work but may refuse to smile at passengers.

“We will be selective in providing our services,” said union official Tsang Kwok-fung. “This could include not smiling at passengers. It means they will still be able to reach their destinations, except they are paying a five‑star price to get a three‑star service.”

The power of a smile should not be underestimated. It lifts the spirits and cheers the soul. Researchers have found that people who smile lots live longer than those who don’t. And yet in Britain, our default expression seems to be the grimace. We don’t do service with a smile so much as service with a sigh.

Walk into any train station or supermarket, go to any bank and arrive at any of our airports, and you will struggle to make eye contact. It’s as if the whole country has been on a smile strike for years. And yet, what could be! The ruse by Cathay Pacific staff shows neatly why Asia continues to rise and rise while we dwindle. Could Tsang Kwok-fung perhaps have a word with some of our unions?